Water is called the elixir of life for a reason. A lot of agrarian problems of our economy revolve around water.. For the last few years we have been trying to focus on water related issues in rural Odisha. This year GGS initiated 35 water related activities. The work included digging / cleaning/ making of ponds, canals and wells. We also worked on rainwater harvesting / groundwater recharging activities apart from making reservoirs and check dams. 7 Shoes and why they make a difference. 

There’s a lot to be said about the simple unadulterated joy of a new pair of shoes. There’s hardly anyone who hasn’t felt this joy.. Yet millions of kids going to school without a pair of shoes, miss this basic. At Gaon Gathana Samiti we strongly believe that it is the little gaps that make a BIG difference.This year we reached out 5000 shoes to children in 48 villages which included 1500 shoes as part of our family kits and 3500 shoes to anganwadis, schools, coaching centers and informal setups. Goonj , a Delhi based Organisation started its partnership with Gaon Gathana Samiti in 2015 , pledging to give a new pair of shoes to a child in need on its every purchase. 

This partnership strengthened the work and also validated our philosophy that small efforts do make a big difference.. 8 AGRICULTURE There is a close connection between water and agriculture and both these issues have adirect bearing on seemingly unrelated issues like migration, employment, income generation and the overall well-being of our country. In 2018-19, Gaon Gathana Samiti took up 02 FPOs activities with village communities in Banki & Dompada block of Cuttack District .These included land bunding, community farming, making of kitchen gardens and irrigation related activities which result in more efficiency and better productivity for the farmers across India. 9 SAFEGUARDING THE ENVIRONMENT Social Forestry: Human being & Plants are the most important constituents of the environment. 

The plants help in reducing the level of pollution in the atmosphere by reducing the content of carbon di-oxide and increasing the oxygen content whereas the human being does the opposite. Plants help in keeping the atmosphere cool and thereby attracting more rain. Besides the above plants provide food, fodder, fuel, medicine, wood, flower etc. to meet the day to day needs of the human beings. As an initiative to check the environmental degradation GGS during the year organized awareness programmes in BankiDompara block of Ganjam district of Odisha involving folk plays. .With a view to protect the environment GGS lent the helping hand by reducing the level of pollution by promoting afforestation in BankiDompara block of Cuttack district of Odisha. 

Also educative programmers were organized in 12 nos. of schools in the same block to create consciousness regarding environmental protection issues. Like the previous year also a mixed nursery was raised in Charigharia of BankiDomparablock of Cuttack District involving 25000 seedlings out of which 20000 seedlings were distributed to the local inhabitants free of cost for planting in their own backyard. Such an initiative will help the people to meet their fuel wood and fodder demand to some extent in due course and help in reducing the load on natural forest resources. 

The remaining 5000 seedlings were used in avenue plantation. EFFORTS FOR SUPPORTINGDEPRIVED SECTIONS OF THE SOCIETY:  Women Welfare programme Women in the past have proved that they are not the mere service providers but they can do everything the males can do. Despite the contribution of women to our society we have never recognized them instead miss treated them and used them like servants. 

Taking into account the sufferings of these special categories of ladies, our organization with the help of its volunteers tried its best to solve these emerging problems and bring the distressed women into the main stream of the society.GGS took effective measures by identifying these cases and then providing them rehabilitation services through various projects being run by Govt. & Non Govt. agencies in the district of Cuttack & Jajpur. During the year 124 nos. of such women living in difficult circumstances have been provided services under the schemes like Swadhar, Ujjawala, FCC, Short Stay Home etc.  Welfare of Disabled: As we know that the physical deformity either from birth or caused due to accidents is not the fault of the person concerned. 

Therefore it is inhuman to neglect and mistreat these innocent human beings as they have the same right to live as ours. . Therefore we the conscious people should realize the problem and treat the equally with other nor man human beings. During the year 30 nos. of disables from Banki block of Cuttack district were trained in tailoring and provided with credit assistance for starting their own self employment 10 units. All of them have been earning decently with our back up assistance. Their quality of living has increased considerably and efforts are on to avail financial assistance from Govt. of India to start the project “Community Based Rehabilitation” Programme for these people for their integrated development. This is one of our series of initiatives to help the deprived and neglected mass of the society to have a respectful living.  Drug De-addiction Center : Drug Abuse inflicts irreparable damage to the physical and psychological condition of the human being leading to serious health disorders, social disharmony and law & order problems. 

To control the drug abuse and trafficking the Govt. of India has framed some laws and time & again adopting various other measures. Through intervention in the project area we came across of the fact that the drugs like alcohol, ganja, bhang, opium & its derivatives etc. are being extensively abused by a large section of people in Kandhamala District of Odisha. Realizing the serious consequences of drug abuse our organization started a treatment cum rehabilitation center for drug addicts in Kandhamala district of Odisha in 2012-13. The said center has the integrated facilities for treatment of 5 patients at a time. 

The center is providing multifarious services like creating awareness in the local area against the drug abuse, identification of potential clients for detoxification, motivational counseling for treatment at the de-addiction center, detoxification, counseling, referral, aftercare & follow up services, vocational & work place rehabilitation, social re-integration etc. The center is helping the SC & ST especially hailing from very poor families thus saving them from starvation deaths and bringing them back to the mainstream of the society. The said center is working in reducing the drug abuse and drug demand in the area. 

During the reporting year 88 nos. of potential addicts were identified, motivated and provided treatment successfully and all of them are now maintaining drug free life. We are now in the process of availing financial assistance from Govt. of India, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. With assistance from the Govt., we would we will upgrade the center to 15 bedded with better facilities to serve more & more nos. of clients in the future.  Legal Awareness for Women In our society women have always been treated as inferior to men meant to stay indoor and serve the men and take care of the whole family. 

They have never been given the liberty to go outside and express themselves. Resulting which discrimination, torture & exploitation are very common for them. Despite women oriented laws to safeguard them the women’s suffering is yet to stop. Legal illiteracy is one of measure causes of their exploitation and GGS has been working in this sector by capacity building of the women in rural areas by educating them about various laws & welfare schemes to safeguard their rights. 

During the year 3 Legal Literacy Camps were organized in Cuttack,Bhadrak,Jajpur district of Odisha in which two hundreds of vulnerable women including Social Activists, SHG leaders, Social Workers, Volunteers etc. participated. During the meeting the resource persons apprised 11 the participants about the various laws to protect the rights of women and the various law enforcement agencies who could assist in case of emergency. RAHAT PROGRAMME Free Healthcare Center : Free health care (FHC) policies are about removing formal user fees. The removal of fees may apply to all health services, to the primary care level, to selected population groups, to selected services for everyone, or to selected services for specific population groups characterized by medical or economic vulnerability. 

Evidence about the impact of FHC policies in terms of financial protection and health service utilization 12 is mixed. If well-designed and implemented, FHC policies can expand coverage in countries with few resources and can therefore be part of a strategy and a catalyst to move towards universal health coverage (UHC). Free health care policies aim to reduce the financial barriers that people may experience when trying to access health services. 

They eliminate formal user fees at the point of service. Examples of services under a free health care policy include:  antenatal care  assisted deliveries  caesarean sections  health services for children below a defined age (often 5 years)  health services for elderly people above a certain age (often 65 years). These services are chosen to protect population groups deemed to be especially vulnerable, particularly low-income groups. Defined geographical areas or easy-to-observe socio-demographic criteria such as age, sex or pregnancy are used to determine whether a person is eligible for free health services at the point of use. 

This is in contrast to relying on income or another means of assessment to determine whether an individual is entitled to exemption from user fees. With limited budget resources to fund FHC as a way to make progress towards UHC, there are inevitable trade-offs, which lead to decisions about prioritizing particular services or population groups over others. EDUCATING THE RURAL MASS:  Awareness Programme on HIV/AIDS: HIV is a virus that destroys the white blood cells of our body thus weakening the immune system. A weak immune system makes the body vulnerable to opportunistic infections. 

Then all types of diseases attack the body & such a situation or condition of the body is called AIDS. AIDS is now in epidemic stage. AIDS is totally incurable, so far there is no effective treatment found out to stop the disease from killing the thousands of human beings every day throughout 13 SHG DIGITISATION PROGRAMME ( E – Shakti ) : The National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) initiated the digitising of Self Help Groups (SHGs) in India through their pilot project, e-Shakti. This project began with the aim to address particular concerns such as the quality of bookkeeping of SHGs and assist banks in making informed credit decisions with regard to the groups through the Management Information System (MIS). The project has covered more than 25 districts and over 1.3 Lakh SHGs in terms of digitising. This article talks about e-Shakti NABARD and the various elements of the initiative. GGS implementing e Shakti project in Cuttack & Jajpur District . Near about 3400 SHGs including in this project . 

The irregular and delayed maintenance of books of accounts of SHGs is the main reason why the digitisation of records of SHGs are required. With the power of digitisation, transparent and proper maintenance of the records would nurture and strengthen SHGs internally. Initiating the e-Shakti project would also bring SHGs, through digital empowerment, to a common web-based online platform by simplifying bookkeeping for various clients who find it difficult. It also promotes the national agenda of Financial Inclusion and paves the way of credible SHG data. By doing so, the credibility of these groups can be used by Credit Bureaus in order to bring down the problems related to financing. 

The Process The following are the steps taken in order to implement the e-Shakti project for every SHG in India. 1. Mapping of existing SHGs in terms of Bank and Branch in the District. 2. Training volunteers to obtain SHG and their Members’ data. 3. Feeding data through a customized software on the central server. 4. Hosting data online under a dedicated website. 5. Maintaining data and data recovery centers. 6. Updating transactional data regularly. 7. Generating Management Information System (MIS) for different users. Effects of Implementing e-Shakti The following are the effects of implementing e-Shakti in Self Help Groups.  SHGs can obtain credit according to their real-time performance.  Implementing this project has significantly reduced the linkage gap of Saving-Credit. 

The credit history of members is obtained.  Transparency is promoted through SMS alerts in real time as well as in 10 different languages to the members.  Helped to combine SHGs with various other Government Programes. Included members of SHGs in the broader agenda of Financial Inclusion. CULTURAL PROGRAMMES: Cultural Programes play an important role in providing recreation thus help the human being to overcome the difficulties and hardships of the life and also binds the people of different caste, religion, group, community etc. with a thread of friendship & fraternity. It helps in strengthening the communal harmony and promoting national integration. 14 Realizing the importance of the cultural programms our organization has been giving due emphasis to cultural activities since long. During the year a series of cultural programms were organized at Banki, Niali, Tigiria, Korai, Danagadi blocks under Cuttack & Jajpur district in which folk groups performed different songs and dances. 

The programme was enjoyed by thousands of people around the blocks. PROMOTION OF RURAL LIBRARY It has been observed that the rural areas are backward in education compared to the urban areas due to a no. of factors. One of the reasons is the absence of proper infrastructure. Therefore our organization realizing the problem has been managing a Library in rural area to promote quality education and create interest for reading among the people of all categories of the society without any discrimination with respect to caste, creed and religion. 

The library is located at Similipur under Banki-II block of Cuttack district of Odisha. More than 9550 books, magazines, journals along with competitive books for various professional and technical courses and daily news papers for the benefit of people of all ages are readily available in the library. Different types of books like text books for students, novels, autobiographies, books on science & technology, literature, history, culture, stories, poems are available to suit all sections of the society. 

The library is on the process of up gradation with assistance availed under MPLad Fund. Once the up gradation is over the said library would house more books and provide more space for study purpose. The activity is a definite step in promoting positive atmosphere for the students, school drop outs, educationists in the rural areas. Celebration of Development Days : GGS takes special interest to celebrate several national celebration days with its members and the public as participants. 

The following days were specially celebrated for healthy growth of local community. A list of the days that are celebrated this year is given in the table. Sl No DATE PROGRAMME 01 12th January National Youth Day 02 26th January Republic Day 03 30th January Anti Leprosy Day 04 8 th March Worlds Women’s Day 05 30th April Child Labour Day 06 15th August Independence Day 07 2 nd October Gandhi Jayanti 08 29 October Disaster Day 09 5 th December International Volunteers Day 15 

CONCLUSION: 

To achieve the objectives of the organization, GGS has been applying strenuous efforts through its management. Volunteers & work force with limited assistance & resources from Govt. & Non Govt. sources. Being a NGO with limited resources have done noteworthy stride in various fields benefiting varieties of sections of the society. It has been actively mobilizing the co-operation and assistance from various sources and expect the sponsoring organizations to come forward and strengthen our financial capability for subsequent service for the society.